Hands off our nurses, Baillieu and Gillard!
Posted by John, March 3rd, 2012 - under Fair Work Australia, Gillard, Gillard Government, Gillard Labor, Labor Party, Strikes, Victorian nurses.
The Victorian Hospitals’ Industrial Association is considering taking the Victorian nurses’ union to court for contempt over the alleged refusal of nurses to comply with a federal Court order to cease industrial action.
The union’s leaders could be jailed, without trial.
This is an assault not only on nurses but on every single worker in Australia, and our already very restricted right to strike. It is happening under Gillard Labor’s anti-worker ‘Fair Work’ Act.
The nurses in Victoria have overwhelming public support in their fight for wage justice and defence of nurse/patient ratios. Contempt of court action will only polarise the dispute and harden that support, if it is accompanied by action.
First that must be all nurses walking off the job indefinitely if there is any contempt of court action, let alone jailing.
But because this is a very real and grave threat to all unionists it also means there must be a union wide response.
Given the milksops of mediocrity who currently run the ACTU and most unions won’t lift a finger, rank and file unionists have to begin agitating in their unions to defend our nurses.
That means both putting pressure on the leadership of our own unions to threaten industrial action to protect the nurses and to begin organising separately from the officials when they sit idly by while this grave threats to unions and unionists unfolds.
The trade union movement has the historic responsibility and opportunity to defend nurses and turn the tide in the one sided 30 year class war of the bosses against us by fighting back and defending the right to strike.
Nurses have to take the first step.
In 1950 Helen Palmer and Doreen Bridges wrote the ballad of 1891 about the shearers’ strike. She finishes of with a justly famous line. It says: ‘When they jail a man for striking it’s a rich man’s country yet. ‘
In today’s words, when they jail a nurse for striking it’s a rich pig’s country still.
Hands off our nurses, Baillieu and Gillard.
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